Over at I Think ^(Link) Therefore I Err, some observations are made and an inference is drawn.

President Obama yesterday scolded Wall Street bankers who received millions of dollars in bonuses last year, calling the payouts “shameful” and chiding the executives for a lack of personal responsibility at a precarious time for the nation’s economy.

That’s the first paragraph in a Washington Post story today. And I’m done reading. Why? Because I don’t listen to people who
1) tell me I have to sacrifice my comfortable 72degree home and then go increasing the heat in the oval office to orchid weather.

2) tell me I can’t eat what I want and then have a party with $100 steaks on the menu

3) and now tell me that bankers are shameful for taking money during such hard times while “stimulating” and economy by essentially taking money during such hard times for things that he wants. Or enjoying a 170 million dollar inauguration.

As Dinocrat notes, this is looking like a track record of do as I say, not as I do.

If you recall, Reagan came in during hard economic times and trouble in the middle east. 

Reagan didn’t face a walk in the park. The unemployment rate in 1980 was 7.1 percent, almost exactly the same as now. Inflation, averaging 12.5 percent for the year, and the prime interest rate, averaging over 15 percent, were much higher. Public confidence was low. Speaking to the nation on behalf of his economic program on Feb. 5, Reagan said the nation was in “the worst economic mess since the Great Depression.”

I oppose with all my might and will the proposed multi billion dollar bailout package that Obama is putting forth. This is just like the Bush bailout except more expensive but less justifiable. Which isn’t to say Bush’s bailout was justifiable, it wasn’t, but whatever modicum it may had, Obama’s clearly does not.

Part of me is hoping it’s inevitable, and mostly likely colossal failure will pave the way for a libertarian snap back at the national level. If would be cool to see this generate enough political will to give the next president the power to drastically revise some of the entitlements programs like medicare and social security.

Here is an excellent news report on the consequences of hand gun bans in Great Brittan.

Shockingly, banning hand guns has not brought down crime, in fact, it seems to have increased it.

Pay particular attention to the unbelievable injustice of the home owner that was jailed protecting his home when he shot and killed one of two burglars that had broken in. What kind of incentive structure do we have where an otherwise law abiding citizen is jailed longer for protecting his home than the burglars that broke in.

Obama seeks  GOP input on the new $825 billion stimulus package.

“The goal is to seek their input,” Robert Gibbs, a White House spokesman, said of the meetings with Republicans. “He wants to hear their ideas. If there are good ideas — and I think he assumes there will be — we will look at those ideas.”

Since when do presidents ask rival party congressmen for ideas? Something fishy is going on in Washington.

Hooray!

Mr. Obama signed executive orders closing the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, within a year; ending the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret prisons; and requiring all interrogations to follow the noncoercive methods of the Army Field Manual.

However, the question of what to do with the enemy combatants is still unanswered.

Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said the decision to close the prison within a year “places hope ahead of reality — it sets an objective without a plan to get there.”

But I think he’s missing the point. We are sending a message to the world. It’s not going to be easy, but that’s how America rolls. At the birth of our nation, we claimed “all men are created equal,” yet allowed slavery for nearly a century more. Look where we are now. So, even though we don’t have a plan for how to close Guantanamo yet, we cannot sit idly by and allow our principles of freedom and due process to corrode simply because we are afraid of some third-world religious fanatics.

And anyone who thinks this means Obama is going to release a bunch of dangerous Islamic terrorists has seriously misunderestimated our new president.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Geron Corp., a Menlo Park, Calif., biotechnology company, is expected to announce Friday that it received a green light from the agency to mount a study of its stem-cell treatment for spinal cord injuries in up to 10 patients. The announcement caps more than a decade of advances in the company’s labs and comes on the cusp of a widely expected shift in U.S. policy toward support of embryonic stem-cell research after years of official opposition.

Obviously stem cell research should not be forbidden. It’s good to see this important avenue of research is back on track. Hopefully big discoveries will be made before another conservative president forbids it.

For a crappy version of Forest Gump?

You have to be kidding me!

One thing the Obama crew has going for them is their tech savvy. However, upon entering the White House they found it stuck in the technological dark ages.

It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari.

I’m sure they’ll be hiring some awesome IT people to streamline not just how their offices work, but the entire executive bureaucracy.

Compelling argument.